Fallout Equestria: The Indefatigable

November 27, 1277 - Mission Day 49

"This is the final log of Captain Sea Leg of Her Majesty's Ship Victory. It has now been a full year since the bombs dropped, and eleven months and twenty-eight days or so since we lost contact with the Indefatigable, six months since the Hoof and Seaward Shoals broke formation to sail south, and three months since the Constellation was lost. Despite all of our best efforts, we have been unable to obtain more supplies.

"All discipline aboard the ship has broken down. Me and officers Dawn, Frost, Bridge, Arid, and Hoof have locked ourselves in the CIC, the only door that the Exo doesn't have the override keys for. The meager supplies we brought in here with us are quickly running out and radiation levels are rising, since we have to continue letting in the outside air to breathe. Surveillance systems are telling us that many of the crew have taken to eating each other.

"I am making this log to finalize this ship's legacy. We are currently preparing a dose of med-X large enough to painlessly shut down our nervous systems, before radiation sickness or dehydration takes us. We believe we have tried our damndest to fight against the encroachment of that dark, dark night. There is very little more we could have done, not since that damn cloudship came out of nowhere and struck that hole in our ship without warning and forced us to beach ourselves. Perhaps if we could still move, we could have moved south to meet back up with the other two, attempt to continue scavenging.

"But no, I think. The end was always inevitable. Ships were not made to insulate from this sort of apocalypse. We don't even have any radiation suits to make going outside less of a death sentence, just RadSafe. Why would you design a military vessel to survive the end? Victory was always in sight, Victory was always on our side. Celestia forbid anything outlasted the brass in their high towers. Or perhaps they're still alive? Hiding in a Stable, maybe, or on some remote oil platform or cloud city, eating corn on the cob, buttering their mash potatoes and drinking their sparkling wine. Maybe that's where the Indefatigable went? Maybe that was the Admiral's secret mission all along? Damn her, either way.

"I'm sorry Port Call, I should have come home when I was given the chance. I should have grown old and grey with you. I should have stood side by side with you when the flashes came. I was deceived. We were all deceived, by those damn politicians and nobility, handing down their orders from on high. Who would just- LET something like this happen!? Was surrender really the worse alternative!? Did we care about our damn coal, our damn Princess so much that we would rather see our bodies slowly dissolve, our comrades eat each other, see billions die?

"Maybe we are all complicit. Maybe we're all the bastards for letting this madness go on... I'm not even sure there'll be a world left to judge us on that.

"I can only take a small solace in the fact that I was 'high up enough' in that big, heavy chain of command that I get to choose to go out painlessly. The others are making their final logs too. It won't be long now. I just hope there's a place I go after this, where I can see her again.

"Only one way to find out."

...

"This is Captain Sea Leg, signing off."

"So, y'all have been surviving here for two hundred years?"

"Nope, just the past one hundred or so."

Brass Bugle walked next to the Deputy between towering ramshackle structures, several of her squaddies trailing close behind. Now that they were in the midst of the town, she could appreciate just how much effort had gone into building the place up. This was no mere, hastily-erected village to support refugees, as she had suspected during the flyover, but instead a real and functional community.

Neon signs glowed above shops, erected into the sides of ships that stood atop stilts, steadied by concrete foundations that sank into the moist mud that carpeted most of the areas between the concrete piers. Wooden planks and gravel made up roads that ran between buildings, lit up by the glow of makeshift lamps and criss-crossed by a seabee's nightmare of electrical wires.

Bugle counted the buildings as they walked past. There was a food market, full of mostly fish - although there was a single stall selling vegetables. Other than the market, they passed by a medical clinic (a sign outside read 'No admittance!'), a weapons store, a tailor, shipwright, and a... water shop.

She took a moment to squint at the price chart hanging next to the faucet on the front of the refurbished tanker boat that was the water store. '10 bottle caps for an ounce'. Bottle caps?

"This is, ah, this is Sunset Town. We're a big supplier of food and scrap for the Las Pegasus Area. The Tar Coats also do a lotta stuff through here, we're the biggest sea-facing dockyard on the west coast," Deputy Haggle explained, nervously glancing between Bugle and her juniors.

Bugle looked behind her, where wooden jetties extended from the shoreline, several small craft bobbing in the tide next to them, "...This is the biggest dockyard in the West?"

"Uh, yeah?" Deputy Haggle blinked, before his mouth curved into an 'o', "Oh, yeah! I forgot, you had cities as big as Old Pegasus. I guess this is pretty small fry, huh?"

"Can't be more than two thousand ponies in this here ditch," Bugle mumbled.

"Yep!' Haggle's eyes brightened up proudly, "Hard to support much more than that in one place, y'know, with the cloud cover and all. Nothing really grows, the soil's not really much for growing anyway. You have to have a unicorn with a knowledge of the right spells to nurture crops."

Bugle idly wondered if the Indefatigable had a unicorn with that knowledge. Surely they did. They had plenty of MAS eggheads to keep the megaspell running. Then again, would the officers really tell them if they didn't?

"The cloud cover? You mean them ash clouds are still hanging about, after all this time?" Brass asked.

Hearing the explanation of time travel had certainly boggled her. Sure, it explained why there was still civilization at all in the Las Pegasus area, why the ship hadn't been irradiated more than a frozen pie in a microwave, and a whole bunch of other stuff... but still. It all just felt surreal, like it was going to be a dream she was about to wake up from.

Then again, she recalled feeling something similar when she peeked out of the hatches leading to the flight deck and saw the horizon glowing green.

"Oh no- the cloud cover the Pegasi put up..." the Deputy trailed off as they reached a concrete structure up ahead. One of the only original buildings in the area, as far as Bugle could see, "This here's the Mayor's house. I'll let her explain most of it for you. She's a bit more educated, since she's a Dweller and all."

"I... see..." Bugle said, giving him a queer look that he couldn't see. Just save it all for the after action report, let the pencil-pushers do the thinking.

Ducking through the front door, she was introduced to a small reception area. A threadbare rug covered the center of the room, a beat-up terminal glowed green at a desk in the back, a ceiling fan spun, and a radio played Sweetie Belle from somewhere. An emblem was painted on the back wall, of a sunset at the edge of a wall of clouds.

After a few awkward looks were shared with the receptionist, Captain Bugle instructed much of her squad to remain in the lobby, lest the mayoral office get crowded. Then, she was lead into the back, into a large office space.

A wooden desk, clearly crafted from scratch rather than refurbished, sat in the center of the room. A safe sat in a corner, rusty filing cabinets lined a wall, another terminal glowed, and a group of ponies regarded Bugle and the two other Rangers that joined her with suspicious, searching eyes.

Sitting around the periphery of the room were ponies, wearing barding made out of... leather? Lizard skin? Bandoliers of huge, steel-core bullets covered their bodies and machined, professionally-built guns were levitated next to them or mounted to homemade battle saddles. Bugle frowned and her mental link tensed on the trigger to activate her own weapons as she spied the rifles the ponies were wielding.

Anti-Machine Rifles. One of the few things that could reliably spell the doom of a Ranger. They were a bit too CQC to reliably use the heavy, long-barelled weapons against her, but a fight would be ugly.

One of the rifle-wielding ponies cracked a stained, rotten smile at her, as if they could smell her pause.

Sitting at the mayoral desk itself was a unicorn mare, face straight and eyebrow quirked. She had a yellow mane and a grey coat, with a cutie mark of a paper mache gear on her flank. Most significantly, she was wrapped in the thick spandex of one of those Stable-Tec jumpsuits that were plastered all over the accursed company's advertising. On her collar was the number '84', and on her foreleg was a glowing PipBuck.

"Mayor Grinding Gears, this is Captain Brass Bugle, of..." the deputy looked towards Bugle with a questioning glance.

"3rd Ranger-Marines," Bugle answered simply, facing her head towards the mayor but keeping a keen eye towards the armed in the room.

"The guards tell us you're from the phantom ship," the mayor spoke up, showing a row of teeth that had clearly seen the attention of toothpaste in the last decade, "I honestly find that hard to believe, but at the same time your friends over at Blueblood don't seem like the type to pull such an elaborate ruse just to push around some fisherponies."

Bugle's eyes drifted for a moment as she considered the mayor's words. Blueblood could've been referring to the Prince Blueblood Army Academy, up the River Rush. Was there remnants there? Other Rangers? Realizing there was silence hanging in the air, she snapped out of it.

"I assure y'all, we just wanted to talk. Didn't mean to scare you none," Bugle quickly assured.

"Awful lot of firepower for a simple delegation. Usually we don't allow non-citizens to carry a pistol into town, let alone an entire set of Power Armor," the Mayor raised an eyebrow, "And don't try anything funny. The guys in the room with me aren't the only firepower we have trained on you."

One of the gun-totting ponies suddenly let his rifle fall level with Bugle's center of mass. She flinched. His dot flickered, but stayed yellow.

Switching away from her speakers, Bugle hissed into her radio, "These fuckers are gettin' on my nerves."

"Stay calm. Deescalate the situation. These are still ponies we're talking to, they can be reasoned with."

Eyes firmly on the end of the barrel, she took a deep breath and switched back to her speakers, "Yer the ones seemingly itching for a fight. If y'all may observe, my weapons are neatly stowed, and have been since we landed. Awfully hard to have any kinda civilized discourse if we're in an Appleoosan standoff."

Mayor Gears looked over to the one that had threatened Bugle, waving a hoof dismissively. With a twitch of their muzzle, the rifle went back to aim up at the ceiling, its wielder reaching into a pocket for a box of cigarettes.

"My apologies," Gear offered, not a hint of genuineness in her voice, "Steel Rangers aren't the most liked 'civilized' ponies in this part of town."

"I think I can tell," Bugle muttered, eyes now constantly panning across the gathered ponies.

"We got questions for you, maybe about as many as you do for us. How about we take turns?" Gears leaned back in her seat, placing her hooves over her stomach, "I'm the host. I go first. There aren't a lot of living pre-war ponies hanging around, how'd you get here?"

Bugle chuckled, "I just learned I'm supposedly in th' future thirty minutes ago. We're just about as confused as you."

"I find that hard to believe," Gears said bluntly, eyebrows knitting.

"I swear on my Honesty as a member of the Ministry of Wartime Technology, I got no clue," Bugle shook her head, "It's my turn now, ain't it?"

"I suppose," the mare's lips drew into a line.

"Ask her for a history of what's happened since the War."

"What's happened since the War?" Bugle echoed the voice in her ear.

Gears snorted, "That's a big fucking question. I guess I can give you the summary," she scratched her chin, "Let's see... well, when the world blew up, ponies went into big underground bunkers called Stables, built by a big pre-war corporation. Most of the underground ponies were earth ponies and unicorns, cause most of the pegasi flew up into the clouds and closed them behind them. That's why we got this big curtain of clouds above us all the time that blot out the sun. Chokes the crops, nothing grows without the right magic now."

Bugle narrowed her eyes, "Now why would they do-"

"Ah ah! One question at a time! My answer's already much longer than yours was," Gear scolded, before leaning forward and continuing, "Anyway, decades later, the radiation falls off enough that some of the Stables begin to open up. Some stay sealed up until today though. There's also ponies in the areas that the bombs missed that lived through the winter, mostly by being nomads and moving from place to place and scavenging old preserved food n' stuff. Life on the surface is real tough, real civilization like the Syndicate and us didn't really form until around a century ago, but we're trying our best now."

Bugle nodded slowly. She supposed she had to take back some of the nasty things she'd said about Stable-Tec. It sounded like they'd ended up saving up a few ponies in the end... even if it probably didn't outnumber the ones they fucked over before the war.

"My turn," the unicorn raised an eyebrow, "What're you hoping to gain from this conversation?"

"Information. Our supply status is classified. Your next question to ask her will be about this cloud layer."

"Information. We're high n' dry, back-ass into a hornet's hive. Honestly, just orientin' us is a big help," she replied, "Now, about that cloud layer... why?"

The Mayor chuckled, before throwing her hooves into the air, "No clue! We've been asking ourselves that question for the past two hundred years! Some pegasi have tried to go up and ask, but they never come back down."

"Huh..." Bugle trailed off as she wondered if that airhead over in Operations knew anything about it.

"Regardless... what exactly do you have aboard that big ship, anyway?" the Mayor asked.

"Be vague."

"A whole heck of a lotta classified things that go whirr and click," Bugle frowned.

The Mayor gave her a disappointed look, "Sounds like pre-war Steel Rangers are a lot like post-war one when it comes to their toys."

"Ask about those other Rangers."

"Speaking of Post-War Rangers. There're survivin' Rangers?" Bugle leaned forward slightly, the motion imperceptible against the stiffness of her armor.

"Yeah, yeah. Power Armor's good enough to resist balefire, apparently. A few of you military guys survived inside of them or inside of bunkers. They're worse than Central and Hoofington raiders, though. They have some crazy religious belief that everything more complicated than a wheel is their Goddess-given property. I bet if they encountered your pretty little ship, they'd cut down every single one of you and loot it for your toasters. Last time we checked though, they didn't have flying machines, that's why we're willing to even consider believing your crazy time travel story."

Bugle had a sneaking suspicion Gears was downplaying something, but once again kept the thought for an after-action report. Also, Goddess? Some sort of new religion at play, no doubt.

"We've never seen a ship quite like yours, with that big flat deck and all. What makes it different from the rest?" was the next question.

"Give her this one, but don't be too specific."

"It's an aircraft carrier. It carries flying machines, and that big flat deck is to give them space to run up and take off," Bugle's muzzle twitched, "Before the War, they said she was gonna be the last of her kind. They thought the cloudships would replace'em. Guess they were right, but for the wrong reason. Ain't gonna be a shipyard big enough to raise another one of her any time soon."

"I'd expect not..." the Mayor hummed, looking confused for a moment. She seemed to shake it off soon enough, "Your turn."

"What's the Syndicate?"

"What's the Syndicate?" Bugle simply echoed.

"Where me and my friends are from," Gears nodded towards the rifle-totting ponies, "Came from Stables 84 to 86. We keep the ponies in this region safe from the Rangers, the deathscuttles, steelbeaks, hellhounds... you name it. We also provide the power and keep the River Rush safe for the boats. All we take in return is a little bit of food, scrap, caps, y'know. Small service for peace of mind in this hell."

"Uh huh..." Bugle nodded slowly, not really understanding at all.

"What's your ship need most?" Gears suddenly pressed, "Food? Unless you got a Stable orchard in there, can't have infinite of it."

"Tell her we need soil to create a farm."

"We need good soil, so that we can start a farm," Bugle grunted, eyes narrowing.

"Guess you probably have the right tech to support that, huh?" Gears pursed her lips, "Listen, I'm a representative up in the Syndicate. Maybe we can help each other out? I can introduce you ponies to the council, set up some trade, direct you to some places, get you all the information you want. In return we just want stuff you probably got in droves. Replacement parts, expertise, medicine... how about it?"

Bugle turned her head, looking back towards her juniors, before looking back. In her ears, she could hear chatter off-mic, flavored by the crackle of radio weaving through ionizing nercomantic energy and the walls of the building. Finally, command responded.

"I don't see why not. Tell her we accept."

"Sounds like a mighty fine offer. We accept," Bugle nodded.

"Just one condition," Gears raised a hoof, causing Bugle to roll her eyes, "I'm the one putting my neck on the line to bring you into the Gun Rush Casino. Our clinic is currently overrun with deathly ill. Real sad stuff, fillies, colts, and their mommas and papas alike. Do you have your own medics aboard? Could you take a look at them?"

Another radio command later, and Bugle sighed, acquiescing, "Of course. Wouldn't be equinitarian not to."

It only took the ship's surgeon one look into the medical clinic through the video feed to say there was no point in sending doctors over to Sunset Town. Recommendations for medevac came as soon as the feed panned over to the vomit covering the operating table.

Manehatten-Class Carriers, intended to be the center point for large naval fleets, were equipped to act as hospital ships for its entourage in lieu of the presence of an actual hospital ship. Thus, on top of the standard infirmary were patient wards, offices for specialists, autodocs, diagnosis wards, and even prosthetic fabricators. Ever since Bomb Day (as the crew had taken to calling it), the hospital had kept itself fairly busy. The low morale had caused fights and suicide attempts, hospitalizing many (certainly, the counsellor's office had been overflowing with business), and radiation sickness from working in the Sunrise chamber and on the flight deck had required intravenous RadAway mixes on occasion.

But then that night, just as the medical staff were about to clean up for the night, the surge alarm went off.

"Surge incoming. Medevacked survivors from balefire blasts!" a computerized voice buzzed over the speaker as red lights blinked throughout the infirmary.

The ship's head surgeon grabbed his whitecoat from his locker. On the right breast was three, pink butterflies, and on the left his name - Doctor Firm Hoof. Adjusting his glasses and grabbing his diagnostic wand, levitating it beside him, he walked out into the main ward as the ship's specialists and corpsponies gathered.

"Our scouts discovered a settlement of civilians out at Cracked Clam Naval Base. Command has offered our facilities to their sick and injured. The Admiral wants a full report on the nature of their conditions after the fact, so pay special attention to your notes," Doctor Hoof said, turning to them with a frown, "Their own medic is coming along, who can help share mechanisms of injuries, histories, etcetera. We have nopony in intensive care, if need be we can send some of our patients back to their berths to make room for this surge. Any questions?"

"I suppose there'll be a lot of ARS?" Doctor Atom Bash asked.

"That can be assumed. You should mix intravenous solutions," Doctor Hoof nodded. RadAway could be ingested just by eating it (in fact it was designed around being orally taken), however it could also be mixed in a solution to be injected via an IV, which helped with patients who were too ill to swallow.

As Vertibucks landed on the deck overhead, ponies being transferred from stretchers to gurneys and rushed down to the infirmary. There was hardly time to prepare after the surge alarm as patients began to pour through the front doors of the compartment. Awaiting corpsponies quickly moved them into areas to be triaged.

Gurneys rushed underneath a poster plastered to one of the infirmary's bleach-white walls. War? Fear? Death? We must do better!

Following behind the patients, a single pony entered under her own power. Gaunt in appearance, cheeks sunken, purple rolls of mane dishevelled into a threaded mess, and an old, ratty Ministry of Peace nurse's uniform on her body, she looked around at the infirmary with a look of astonishment on her dark-rimmed eyes.

Walking over to the unicorn mare, Doctor Hoof greeted, "You must be Sunset Town's doctor. I saw you over the video feed, I believe."

"Erh, yes," she muttered, looking back towards him, "I'm Flow Kindheart."

"Doctor Kindheart," Hoof nodded, "What's your specialty?"

"Huh?" she asked, looking back to her flank, where a syringe of pink liquid lay. Looking back, she shrugged, "Uh... medicine?"

"...Right," Hoof took hers, leading her towards the area where the patients were being inspected, "We need your help with history and mechanism."

While the doctor seemed a bit clueless, with Firm Hoof's rising (and eventually confirmed) suspicion that she had no formal medical training, she did clearly care about her patients. The biggest thing wrong with the vast majority of patients was malnutrition. Scurvy, hypovitaminosis D, and straight up starvation. Following closely behind were massively infected wounds causing sepsis, food poisoning, dehydration (likely caused by the aforementioned food poisoning), and parasites.

There were a lot of parasites. The Equine Body Louse had seemingly survived the balefire holocaust to now, probably, infest the hospital (the staff quickly took preventative measures to prevent it from spreading to them, but there was always still the paranoia). There were also clear signs of tapeworms living in many digestive systems, confirmed by a magical scan and a statement from Kindheart indicating that meat was a common foodstuff in the patient's diets.

Coming across a certain patient, flagged for intensive care, Doctor Hoof and Kindheart moved in to give their opinion on treatment. It was a colt, with a mossy green coat. Giant slashes up his barrel had been sewn back together, but had grown puffy and bright red. Signs of necrosis lingered on the tissue, and his temperature had skyrocketed to near lethal levels.

It was clear to Hoof that, whatever the injury was, bacteria either failed to get disinfected or had gotten in during surgery. His body was trying its best to fight, but with sunken cheeks, visible ribs, and the squirm of parasites in his guts, he was not long for this world. The diagnostic scanner echoed this, his health bar being just a tiny sliver.

Kindheart suddenly looked away, tears welling up in her eyes.

"Miss Kindheart?" Hoof muttered, watching as a corpspony attached a bag of high-potency antibiotics to an IV stand.

"This is my nephew. He was slashed by a propeller. The cuts were too deep for a healing potion - not that we could afford one, and I tried my best with surgery..." she muttered weakly, "Usually we'd just amputate... but can't amputate that part of the body..." a pause, "...It's just, it's the third child my sister will have lost. I dunno if she can take that again."

Hoof pursed his lips, "Any allergies to antibiotics?"

"Huh? No? I don't... think so..." Kindheart blinked.

He nodded slowly in return, taking an alcohol wipe and preparing an injection site for the IV, "We'll fight off the sepsis with IV antibiotics. We'll likely have to intervene with surgery to open those stitches again and clean out infected tissue as soon as he has the strength to survive it. Then we can work on the other problems, like the tapeworms, the lice, the malnutrition..." Hoof gave a comforting smile, "Celestia willing, he will survive, Miss Kindheart."

Kindheart sniffled, watching as the IV tube was inserted into the patient. Pale liquid began to drip down and fill the tube, entering his body. Shaking her head, she simply said, "I don't know how I'm going to repay you for this."

"No need," Hoof shook his head, wrapping a foreleg across her withers, "The Ministry of Peace helps ponies," with a single pat, he retracted his hoof and turned to walk away, "Come now, other patients need our help."